Chapter 36 Epilogue
Epilogue
Spring, One Year Later
Araphi
It’s taken her almost a year to get all the notes and verses of the ballad right, but now it’s ready. Tonight, at the party before Yael and Margot’s wedding, Araphi will play Sage the song she’s written for her.
She hums a snippet from it as she and Sage stroll along the path to Margot and Yael’s cottage in Bloomfield one morning in early April.
“That’s a pretty tune, Bard,” Sage murmurs. “What is it?”
“You’ll see.” Araphi leans against the garden gate that leads to the cottage yard and smirks.
Sage turns to her, one eyebrow raised. “A secret?”
Araphi threads her fingers through Sage’s, pulling her close, so their bodies are pressed together. “A gift, Ranger. Be patient.”
Laughing, Sage kisses her. “If you’d told me a year and a half ago that we’d be walking hand in hand to Yael and Margot’s wedding, I would’ve called you a liar.”
“And I would’ve flirted shamelessly and told you how much I like your sword.”
“You would’ve done that, wouldn’t you?”
Heat flares in Araphi’s belly at the look Sage fixes upon her. Reminding her of last night in the tent they shared along the way to Bloomfield. Taking her back to the way Sage pinned her arms above her head and…
“Stop thinking such wicked thoughts,” Sage whispers, leaning in to kiss the space behind her ear. “Or we’ll have to do something about them, and neither of us have had breakfast yet.”
Araphi catches Sage’s mouth with her own. “I could eat.”
A low moan escapes Sage’s mouth as Araphi deepens the kiss.
“You’re both shameless, you know,” calls out an amused voice from behind them.
Araphi reluctantly pulls away from Sage to see her cousin Yael standing outside the cottage, a basket of daisies in their arms.
“I’ve been watching for you. Margot’s inside making tea. Come on, let’s get you settled.” Yael turns, walking into the cottage. “I want to hear all about your adventures!”
“I’m still not used to seeing them as a gardener,” Araphi admits, as she and Sage walk through the flourishing cottage garden.
Sage steals one more kiss. “Love has a way of changing you more than you ever thought possible.”
That was true, and every day with Sage, every new adventure, still didn’t feel like real life to Araphi. “I suspect I’ve stumbled into an epic love story that has all the makings of a song,” she says, giving voice to the thought at last.
“Perhaps, Bard, but happily this is our real life. The one we chose.”
“The one I’ll always choose.” Araphi kisses Sage once more before they walk into Yael and Margot’s cottage.
Over tea and some of Yael’s fresh-baked biscuits (who knew Yael could bake, and well?), Araphi and Sage catch them up on the adventures of the last year.
There was the trip to Bramble’s village, where they helped with rebuilding and spent some long weeks by the sea, and saw kelpies and mermaids one unforgettable evening.
There were the many weeks spent camping in the eastern woods as they helped a scholar (not Tea, sadly, no one had heard from her since she’d abandoned the party at Briarwall, though Araphi had inquired after her in Ashaway) discover the nest of a rare gilded raven, long thought extinct, so they might petition the crown to preserve that part of the forest.
There was the trip to the Swamplands, so Araphi could visit her grandparents’ village and lay flowers on their graves.
There were a handful of stops in Ashaway, where Sage had dinner with Araphi’s mother, fathers, and siblings—which went far better than Araphi could’ve imagined—and then the family trooped over to the Rookery to meet Sage’s parents, and to hear Araphi play in the Dragon’s Bane.
(Araphi was still shocked that it had happened.)
There were visits to Bloomfield here and there to check in with Yael and Margot, and during those trips, Araphi and Yael spent long nights talking about the rapid decline of the Clauneck fortunes now that their patron had abandoned them (which was the official story; the banishment was known about by only a select few).
Through it all, there were Sage and Araphi, together by campfires and on horseback. In taverns and dining rooms. Hands entwined, content just to be at each other’s sides. It was wonderful, and Araphi still couldn’t quite believe this was her life.
Later that night, Araphi and Sage sit in the middle of the Bloomfield tavern, tankards in front of them.
She tunes the instrument briefly and strums the first few notes of the song she’s been working on—the one she’s been living—for so long.
“This is a love song,” she calls out to the crowd. “I wrote it for someone very special to me, but I’ve not played it for anyone—including her—just yet. I hope you all love it as much as I love her. It’s called ‘The Ranger and Her Bard.’ ”
A loud cheer fills the air, and Yael whistles their approval. Margot claps as well, and beside her, two people she introduced as her parents stand arm in arm. Araphi’s eyes find Sage’s in the crowd, and the ranger grins at her. With a wink, Araphi launches into the ballad.
By the third time Araphi sings the refrain, they’re all singing along with her:
Long the road stretched before them,
Treacherous and hard,
But they rode side by side together,
The ranger and her bard…
By the time she gets to the last verse—the one that’s changed a dozen times since Araphi first wrote it in Arkney, the one that still doesn’t feel quite right, but will have to do this evening—the crowd is on their feet dancing and swaying.
With her heart absolutely full, she walks off to where Sage sits at a table. Then, easing onto Sage’s lap, her lute still clutched close, Araphi sings:
Long they rode together,
But their story will not end,
For the ranger and her bard found new adventures
Round every bend.
Sage
Under an archway of vining wisteria nearly the same pale purple as the twilit sky, Margot and Yael are married at last.
What must be the entirety of Bloomfield has poured into the village square.
Half are already flushed with Clementine’s finest wine, and all are dressed in their finest garb.
Worn but polished boots, embroidered tunics, lush-smelling herbs and early-blooming flowers woven into crowns upon their heads.
Araphi wears a simple but elegant silk gown nearly the same rich earth-dark shade as her hair, but she has every color of hellebore from Margot’s cottage garden braided into her locks: plum and apricot, frost pink and butter yellow, midnight black and cream.
For Sage’s part, she’s purchased a new shirt with no previous mending or bloodstains, and oiled the leather of her dagger belt till it gleams. And Araphi helped her tidy her hair in their room at the tavern just this morning, razoring the underside with more precision than she ever managed alone.
Admittedly she took far longer than Sage did, stopping often to press a kiss to the top of Sage’s spine, or to graze her teeth along her earlobe, until Sage had to reprimand the bard.
Otherwise they might have spent the day pleasuring each other in bed and missed the wedding altogether.
Of course, nobody in attendance holds a candle to Margot Greenwillow in her flowing, pearl-blue gown with a bodice and straps of living wisteria, the same blossoms pinned into her purple hair.
Rather, Margot Greenfern, as Clementine announces her.
And, all right, Yael looks quite handsome in their deep-blue suit, with a hyacinth crown nestled in their dark, jaw-length waves.
But it’s the light in their eyes when they gaze up at Margot that plants them in the soft soil of Sage’s heart once and for all.
Clearly, Yael worships the ground beneath the mud-caked soles of Margot’s garden boots.
Sage understands the feeling.
Araphi leans in to rest her chin on Sage’s shoulder as the pair exchange their promises beneath the arbor.
Margot ends her vows with, “I love you fiercely and entirely, Yael Greenfern.”
“I am yours, Margot Greenfern,” Yael ends their own, simply and sweetly.
The roar of the crowd when they kiss frightens the bats out of the trees.
Afterward, they mount their matching mechanical steeds to ride for the tavern with the rest of the townsfolk parading after them, even the overtired children who’ll surely fall fast asleep beneath the tables.
As Araphi moves to join the crowd, Sage holds her back with a hand at her elbow.
“Stay a moment? Everyone will be celebrating for hours yet—well into the morning, if I know Bloomfield—but there’s someplace I’d like to go first. There’s just…
an awful lot of people here, and I’d like a moment to breathe and look at the stars. ”
Araphi quirks an eyebrow. “By all means, then, lead us to the stars.”
It’s a brief walk back up the lane toward Margot and Yael’s forest cottage, and only a little farther to the grand estate that Margot also owns, but where her parents have been living since she was able to cure them of their years-long magical slumber.
They’ll be busy at the tavern as well, giving Sage the chance to slip over the stone wall of the garden unseen.
She perches at the top to reach a hand down for Araphi, then hops into the courtyard below, helping Araphi down with her hands around the bard’s waist. At last they’re alone together, and in the garden where they met nearly two years ago.
“You didn’t tell me we’d be trespassing,” Araphi admonishes while failing to keep a straight face. “Are there no stars elsewhere in Bloomfield?”
“None quite like these. Here, see?” She finds a soft patch of grass between two towering sweetbriar rosebushes and lies down, beckoning Araphi to join her.
Careless of her gown, Araphi lies beside her. “Yes, Ranger. I see.”
The cloudless sky above them is bejeweled with thousands of stars, like diamonds sewn into velvet. When Araphi slips her fingers between Sage’s and squeezes, Sage holds on even harder.
“Bard…”
“Mmm?”
Sage drums up the courage to voice the question she came here to ask. “What would it look like, do you think, if we ever did something like this? Not that we need a scrap of parchment or a god or a taverner to tell us we belong together.”
“I should say not,” Araphi agrees. “But I wouldn’t mind telling the gods. Or anyway, a few close friends.”
“I think you told the whole village.” Sage laughs, recalling the words of Araphi’s incredible ballad. “ ‘Long they rode together, their story didn’t end’?”
“Well, why should it? There’s so much to do in this world. Adventures to be had, wild places to protect, trolls to slay.”
Sage grins in the dark. “Then we’d better get started.”
“Yes. But…” Araphi rolls toward her suddenly, swinging a leg across Sage’s hips and rising to straddle her. “Tomorrow, perhaps.” She braces her hands on either side of Sage’s head to hover over her, blotting out the stars above.
Sage remembers being quite young, staring up through the clinging smog of the Rookery and wondering what it was like in the many strange and unexplored places those same stars shone down upon.
What she might be like in those distant places.
But there’s no corner of the kingdom or the world where Sage would rather be right now, and no other self than the one who belongs to and with her bard.
“Tomorrow,” Sage murmurs her agreement.
“Or the day after that, depending upon how long Clementine’s pours are tonight.” Araphi laughs, then leans in for a kiss that tastes of lemons.
The Ranger and Her Bard
(The Full Ballad)
The ranger had seen many things
Wandered the farthest shore,
But never did she expect
To succumb to the allure
Of a bard from the finest family,
A girl good with a song,
And equally as talented
As the ranger was strong.
Their party assembled beside the sea,
In a pearl most gritty and rough,
The bard sang for the ranger,
Of how life on the road would be enough.
Long the road stretched before them,
Treacherous and hard,
But they rode side by side together,
The ranger and her bard…
Northward the party traveled,
Beasts found them in the night,
All teeth and spikes and claws,
They put up quite a fight.
The bard rained down fire,
The ranger bared her knives,
The adventurers fought bravely,
And emerged with their lives…
Something more grew between them.
A song waiting to be played,
About the ranger and the bard,
And the music that they made.
Long the road stretched before them,
Treacherous and hard,
But they rode side by side together,
The ranger and her bard…
They played in a village hidden,
The bard charmed for the night,
Then northward they rode,
To face the wilds and the frights
Of that misty icy country,
Full of monsters of old
Ice nymphs with claws like knives,
Winged ghosts, furious and bold.
Treachery stalked their party
A friend turned desperate and strange
With a knife at her neck, the bard
Begged for things to change.
Long the road stretched before them,
Treacherous and hard,
But they rode side by side together,
The ranger and her bard…
Into the Swallow the bard tumbled,
Her life now in danger,
But into the churning waters,
Dove her fearless, bold ranger.
A bit of magic saved them,
An acorn with hidden space,
From the waters they emerged,
And stumbled upon a magical place.
Cold the wind blew and deadly,
All food and warmth were gone.
Lo! They were saved by a witch and owl,
Who knocked on their door at dawn.
Long the road stretched before them,
Treacherous and hard,
But they rode side by side together,
The ranger and her bard…
To her village the witch brought them,
For a season of rest all winter long
Where the bard worked diligently,
Upon this very song!
Alas, winter always ends,
So, their story must as well,
And so they headed south,
To say the bitterest farewell.
But battle waited for them,
Outside the fortress gates,
Blades drawn, they walked forward,
Toward their entwined fates.
Long the road stretched before them,
Treacherous and hard,
But they rode side by side together,
The ranger and her bard…
Swords clashed and clattered,
The ranger fought hard,
But it was music that banished a demon,
Thanks to the lady bard.
Long they rode together,
Their story didn’t end,
The ranger and her bard found new adventures
Round every bend.